The country’s greatest bowler on why his wife, Daniella, is still mad at England, how the game saved him from loneliness growing up and what could be next
“I’m not getting too dark here,” Jimmy Anderson says quietly as we return to a time when he was a solitary boy in Burnley, “but I remember sitting in my room thinking: ‘I wish I wasn’t me. I wish I was someone else.’ That’s not a great place to be at 14. I didn’t fit in at school or have a group of mates. The biggest thing for me then was the feeling of being lonely.
“I didn’t have close friends. We didn’t play cricket at school. I was seen as a bit of an odd person who liked cricket. Why would you like cricket when you can play football and these other amazing sports? I did play them, but obviously not to the same level as cricket. I just felt like an outcast.”
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